The Sega Genesis compilation remake title Mega Man: The Wily Wars has received some long overdue attention in the past few years thanks to re-releases on the Genesis Mini, Nintendo Switch, and as an actual Genesis cartridge produced by Retrobit.  While the game has a lot going for it over its Nintendo Entertainment System predecessor, there are a few design choices that purist fans look down upon when comparing the two versions including shot speed and enemy invincibility windows in which Robot Masters enjoy a few seconds of invulnerability after being shot.  ROM hacker Josephine Lithius has modified Wily Wars to fix some of these issues, creating a best-of-both-worlds combination of design choices.  Here's a summary of the changes:

• Enemy invulnerability time has been all but eliminated.  This means that enemies can take damage more frequently and reliably.  No more “missed” shots!
• The default weapon (the Buster) has been sped up to match its 8-bit counterpart.  Watch those lemons fly!
• The default weapon and some boss weapons can be fired more rapidly!  Hammer that “fire” button and launch waves of projectiles!
• [Mega Man] pulls his Buster back a little sooner after firing!  This… only affects a handful of weapons and the change isn’t that big, but hey!  It might help!

If you've put off exploring Wily Wars because it doesn't feel like your muscle memory remembers, give this hack a try.  If nothing else, Mega Man fans need to play this collection in order to unlock the new Wily Tower game in which players can customize Mega Man's arsenal with all weapons and items from the other games on the cartridge.  Mix and match weapons such as the Rolling Cutter, Crash Bomb, and Magnet Missile all in one loadout!  It's absolutely worth experiencing if you're never tried it.

On this Halloween, let us turn our attention to the end credits of Konami's original Castlevania for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  Rather than credit the staff that worked on the game (either real names or pseudonyms), the credits list the supposed cast of the game itself as played by notable horror icons such as, er, Christopher Bee and Jone Candies.  Mistranslation much?  Probably not.  Drew Mackie at Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games has dissected the Castlevania credits to explain who these parodic names are supposed to be.

Slide two: “Screenplay by Vram Stoker / Music by James Banana.” Again, the first one is very obviously a nod to Bram Stoker, author of the novel Dracula, with a little of the [b]/[v] confusion I mentioned in my piece on Sypha’s name. Interestingly, the person who best fits the title of screenwriter for the first Castlevania is again Hitoshi Akamatsu, so I’m guessing the credits are all purely horror references and not stand-ins for actual people. 

James Banana is presumably a reference to James Bernard, Hammer Films composer and specifically the person who scored the 1958 Dracula. The music for the first Castlevania game was composed by Kinuyo Yamashita and Satoe Terashima. For whatever reason, the name has stuck to Yamashita specifically, even though it’s Terashima who wrote the iconic track “Vampire Killer.”

Those three NES Castlevania games use the tropes of classic horror movies starting on the title screens, so it's no surprise that the credits would complete the experience. Today's modern games include closing credits full of real names that scroll on and on and on, listing everyone who worked in programming, marketing, catering, international versions, people who drove by the studio one day, etc., and it's important to credit everyone who works on a game, but sometimes I think we've lost something by doing away with quick credits that go for a laugh (or at least, in Castlevania's case, a bemused "huh?").

Following on from our last episode where we discussed the closing of Google Stadia, this week's episode follows on from that theme with a discussion of games and modes you cannot play anymore because support for them has been terminated by their publisher.  Spend an hour with us in gaming's graveyard. Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

Order yourself a pizza and settle in as we have a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feast for you on this week's podcast with discussions of Shredder's Revenge and the recently released Cowabunga Collection.  Before we get to that though, we answer a listener request and I tell the story of acquiring an actual honest to goodness Claptrap robot from the Borderlands series to give my wife for her birthday.  Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

We're celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of Nintendo's famed pink puffball Kirby on this week's episode of the podcast, so join us for a bottomless feast of Kirby memories and favorite moments.  Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

Travel back in time with me tor a moment to the era of pre-release hype for Capcom's Mega Man 3 for the Nintendo Entertainment System.  After Mega Man 2 seemingly came from nowhere to score critical acclaim and player popularity, fans were eager to see what was next for the blue bomber.  GamePro magazine took an advance look at the game in the November 1990 issue and ended up mistranslating a few things from Japanese sources.  My absolute favorite mistranslation of all time in gaming media has to be this one in which the magazine proclaimed that Mega Man would face off against his evil brother named Bruce.

During this level Mega Man encounters his evil brother Bruce (an early experiment of Drs Light and Wily that failed) for the first time. Sometimes he'll just get in MM's way, and other times he'll try to destroy MM by shooting him or pouncing on his head.

PROTIP: To beat Bruce, time his jumps and run under him just as he's about to jump on Mega Man. Then, turn and shoot him with the Mega Blaster.

Bruce!  I love it.  It seems like such a random choice for a name and makes you wonder if someone at Capcom was a fan of the E Street Band, but I can see how GamePro ended up with the wrong name.  Bruce, as we know now, is actually Proto Man whose name in Japan is Blues which could easily be munged into Bruce when translating.  Oh classic GamePro, sometimes I really miss you.

After reading Dylan Mansfield's complete history of Majesco's 2005 attempt to revive the A Boy and His Blob franchise for the Nintendo DS, I can only say "I'm sorry I wasted my time."  I was excited about this!  I didn't know better.  Back at E3 2005 I did my best to find a playable demo of the game and was unsuccessful at every turn, and knowing what I know about the project now, I wish I'd put my time on the show floor to better use.  The Majesco representative at their booth even denied they were working on the game.  At the time I chalked it up to industry secrecy, but now that I've seen how the game was shaping up at the time, perhaps the rep was just embarrassed by it.  We definitely dodged a bullet on this one from the ugly character design to the uninspired used of jellybean power-ups to control Blob to the repetitive levels in which the Boy kills human enemies, completely betraying the pacifist themes of the original games.  I'm so glad that when Majesco tried again in 2009, they went with Wayforward's must more beloved take on the franchise.  Anyways, go read the article over at Gaming Alexandria to learn how it almost went so wrong (twice over if you count the axed Game Boy Advance version).  You can even download the unfinished game to try if you want to be personally disappointed.

Sega's classic Sonic the Hedgehog games for the Genesis are still held up as the best in the series, but the handheld Game Gear titles deserve a little spotlight of their own.  The last of those games, Sonic Triple Trouble, was the companion game for Sonic 3 and Knuckles featuring Knuckles as an enemy tricked by Dr. Robotnik once again and a new rival in the form of Nack the Weasel who is running his own plan to collect Chaos Emeralds.  Now Triple Trouble is back as a fan-created game developed by Noah Copeland for Windows and Android that converts the game into a Genesis title and expands on it with new experiences including adding Knuckles and Nack as playable characters, real-time character switching between Sonic and Tails, new level gimmicks, and much more.  Best of all, as a fan game, it's completely free!

My Sonic fan game #SonicTripleTrouble16bit launches on 8.2.2022 after five long years of hard work and passion! See ya then. #SonicTheHedeghog pic.twitter.com/0GsyUQ7c8E

— 🟡Noah N. Copeland🟡GAME OUT! (@NoahNCopeland) July 12, 2022

Now then, where were we?  Sorry to be away for so long, but that's what happens when one of the show hosts dies.  Don't worry too much though!  I got better.  Join us for an all new episode in which I tell the harrowing tale of just what happened to me, and then Blake Grundman steers us into discussing my rehab game of choice, Sonic Origins.  It's great to be back! Download this week's episode directly from PTB, listen with the player below, find us on Stitcher, subscribe via iTunes, Amazon Music Podcasts, and Google Podcasts, toss this RSS feed into your podcast aggregation software of choice, and be sure to catch up on past episodes if you're joining us late. Remember that you can reach us via , you can leave a message on the Power Button hotline by calling (720) 722-2781, and you can even follow us on Twitter at @PressTheButtons and @GrundyTheMan, or for just podcast updates, @ThePowerButton. We also have a tip jar if you'd like to kick a dollar or two of support our way. 

The hilariously named players from 1995's Fighting Baseball for the Super Famicom have become a popular meme thanks to... well, with names like Bobsun Duggnut and Sleve McDicheal, I think you can understand why the Internet had a good laugh.  Now you can generate your own Fighting Baseball team members with Ariel Caplan's Bobsun Dugnutt Redux generator.  The whole thing is powered by some JavaScript and Cloudinary, generating a team roster in the style of the original video game.  Now batting: Douglus Tromk!